


Amelioration

by MaevesChild



Series: Vir Dirthara [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Guilt, Reconciliation, Remorse, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:13:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5496674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaevesChild/pseuds/MaevesChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen was angry for a very long time and everything he hated wore her face. He finally let that anger go, but he never got the chance to tell her, until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amelioration

Cullen recognized her immediately.  

Even if he hadn’t heard that the Inquisitor found the Warden-Commander of Ferelden at Adamant he would have known her.  It had been years since he last saw her but she was still and always the same.  Her face was a bit thinner perhaps; harder with lines at the corners of her eyes.  Her hair was longer and she wore a wedding ring on her slender finger, but it was her.

Kya Amell, his first love.  

Not that she knew, of course.  It wasn’t even particularly realistic to call it love but logic didn’t work well with emotions, no matter how hard he’d tried to rein them in.  He thought about Kya Amell and it certainly felt like love.

He was eighteen when he came to the tower, wet behind the ears and eager to prove himself. Kya Amell was just slightly older but she’d already proven herself to be among the best of the apprentices.  The delay in her Harrowing still was clearly by tradition more than a reflection of her skill.  He was well educated on magic and hers was already a finely tuned instrument then.  She was loud when she wanted to be assertive, but often she’d not speak for hours, her nose buried in some obscure history book as she wiled away her time in the library.

He was posted to guard outside the library and he watched her.  There wasn’t much else to do, standing there trying to keep his mind occupied.  He know that played a role in how he came to feel about her, but that hadn’t made it any easier to push away.

She was everything he thought a mage should be. Confident, logical, _strong._ She wasn’t always obedient or as devout as perhaps she should have been, but he forgot all about that after noticing the other things that distract young men, like the sweet blush of her cheeks and the sweeter curve of her hips under her robes.

He was utterly smitten with her, even if he refused to let himself act on it.  Even when she’d flirt with him, wink at him, he refused to let himself consider it.  Now he had come to realize that a part of him liked to pine and suffer over how he felt about her.  He enjoyed the pain, the ache in his chest.  It wasn’t an easy thing to learn about himself.

Back then, being a Templar was his primary reason for living.  Kya Amell was a close second.  

Until the last time he saw her before today when he became a monster.  In the dungeon at Kinloch, standing watch over Jowan as he awaited his execution, he’d seethed with anger.  If the opportunity had arisen, he would have killed her and enjoyed it.

That man terrified him.

Only months before that he’d stood watch over her Harrowing, his heart pounding, praying to the Maker that she would survive.  When she did, and of course she did, afterwards she took the time to tease him in the hallway outside the First Enchanter’s office.  As much as he’d blushed, he’d never been more thrilled in his life.  For the first time, he seriously considered giving in.  He didn’t, but he let himself think about it.  Cullen had wanted to kiss Kya Amell for years.  If only he could gather up his courage, maybe he could finally do it.

But he didn’t see her again until the Tower was overrun with demons and she recklessly let mages walk out of the Harrowing chamber even after being exposed to demons.  Anger over what the demons did to him, over his lost brothers and sisters, over all his worse nightmarish fears come to life, choked him until he could hardly breathe.  When he told Amell to let the Maker watch over her, he wished she was dead.  He wished he could be the one to kill her.  In that moment, he wanted her to suffer like he had suffered.

The years that followed were not his proudest.

Watching Meredith fall into ruin finally opened his eyes.  Once that happened, he felt a welling of regret so enormous it almost destroyed him.  He remembered every moment of hatred, anger and horrible acts he allowed to happen in the Gallows and he just looked the other way.  In public, he kept his composure, tried to guide his fractured Templar brothers and sisters into something resembling order again.  In private, he stopped eating, practically stopped sleeping and contemplated throwing himself into the sea.

Then he threw away his lyrium and began the long struggle towards being free from it’s grip and his past mistakes.  He would be punished and harshly, but maybe if he survived, he could come out a new man on the other side.

In those first painful days of withdrawal, he thought of Kya often.  He never truly wanted to hurt her, yet at the end, he didn’t see that pretty girl he was so hopelessly infatuated with but instead he saw a monster and he treated her accordingly.  He screamed and purged himself and knew it was he who’d been monstrous, not she.  Kya Amell saved lives; he wanted to throw them away.

When Cullen finally came to his senses, he swore to the Maker that he would do better, every day for the rest of his life.

Seeing Kya now, walking away from the garden, her eyes slightly red rimmed and bleary but still her, still that same face he spent all those silent hours imagining, dreaming what it would be like if they were both just regular people instead of mage and Templar.  He was struck with both nostalgia and guilt.

He knew he should talk to her, apologize for what he’d said, what he’d done but what could he say?  Other than a few short conversations and a copious amount of rumors about how he felt about her, as far as he knew, it was an utterly one-sided relationship.  Twelve years ago, she knew his name.  Would she even remember him now?  

Whatever the case, he was the Commander of the Inquisition now.  And she was the Commander of the Grey and would certainly be leading the Grey Wardens to Weisshaupt as the Inquisitor requested.  He needed to help with the preparations for their departure.  It was his job, whether she remembered that raw boned boy from the library, from his demonic prison outside the Harrowing Chamber, from the dungeon, or not.

Even if she did not recognize him, he had reasonable precedent to speak with her.  Logic perhaps didn’t work on his heart, but it was a good motivator.  His feet finally agreed to move and he made his way down the stairs into the courtyard.  

Sunlight glinted off her ginger hair and off the gold band on her finger.  Cullen was a grown man but it was hard not to be blinded.

She was married to Nathaniel Howe, as the gossip went.  Cullen remembered him as well, having met him once or twice over his years in Kirkwall.  He was absent from her side now and she walked alone through the courtyard.  Everyone knew who she was and gave her space.  Fame did that to people.

He was a few paces behind her when he found his voice.  “Warden-Commander?”

She stopped and her shoulders slumped a little before she turned to face him.  He understood.  Titles were sometimes very heavy to bear.

“Yes?”  she spoke as she turned, before she even looked at him.  “What can I….”  She stopped, the corner of her mouth twitched as if she wasn’t sure whether she should smile or frown.  “Is the entire Inquisition full of people I know?”

So she did recognize him.  He wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.  

Cullen smiled blandly.  “A few, I’m afraid.”

Kya looked at him curiously and cocked her head.  “You look different, Cullen.”

This time, he smirked at her without even considering what a terrible idea it was. “You look the same.”

“Do I?” she asked.  She frowned, a deep crease appearing between her eyebrows.  “I don’t feel the same.”  He didn’t know what to say.  He couldn’t blame her for feeling defeated.  After all she’d accomplished, the Wardens were being banished from Orlais and were nearly gone from Ferelden, save for the King.  He could imagine that felt much the same as when the Templars threw their lot in with Corypheus and slowly paid the price.  

“The scar is new,” she said softly.  “But it looks very handsome.”  She chuckled though it didn’t sound very joyful.. “Then again, you were always handsome even when you were being utterly insufferable.”

“I’m somewhat surprised to hear you say that.”  If he was completely honest, surprised didn’t even really touch it.  He was surprised she remembered his name.  He assumed if she remembered him at all, it would be with disdain, not anything complimentary.

“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows at him.  “I spent enough time pursuing you in the Tower that I thought you might have figured that out.”  She almost smiled but then frowned again.  “Not that it ended well, though I can hardly blame either of us for that.”

Cullen swallowed hard.  He knew exactly who to blame and he’d been blaming him for a long time. “That is why I came to see you,” he admitted.  “When last I saw you I said things that were very unkind.”  He shook his head.  “And they were wrong. In Kirkwall, I learned that magic is not required to make someone a monster.  You didn’t deserve that.”

Kya smiled sadly.  She looked at him in silence for a moment and then reached out and put her hand on his forearm hanging at his side.  “Thank you Cullen,” she said, voice soft.  “That’s more comforting than you realize.  It was hard to reconcile the sweet boy who stammered when I flirted with him to the cold man standing outside of Jowan’s cell.”  Her fingers flexed against his arm.  “I’ve lost a lot over these years.  It makes me happy to know that someone survived me.”

“It was never your fault,” he said, putting his hand over hers and his heart thumped in his chest.  “I let my fear get the best of me, for a long time.  I’m only grateful that I eventually put that behind me.”

“Me too Cullen,” she said.  “More than you know.”  She blinked hard a few times.  “After losing….”  She cleared her throat.  “After all that’s happened, it’s good to know there are still decent people in the world.  I'm glad to know you’re one of them.  I always thought you were.”

“I wasn’t,” he admitted.  It felt incredibly satisfying to confess that to her.  “But I try to be, now.”

“Kya?” A man’s voice called for her and she turned away from him.  Cullen could see her smile even in profile by the way her eyes crinkled as Nathaniel Howe made his way towards them.  

“Excuse me,” she said, only partially turning back to Cullen before she turned away.  He let her walk away, just like he had so many times before.  He could feel finality in her steps.  The moment was over.  All that was left were practical tasks, planning and details.  The past was the past and likely, once she walked out those gates with the rest of the Wardens, he would never see her again.

Cullen knew that what he felt for her had always been in his own head, but that didn’t matter; infatuation, obsession, unrequited love?  

Whatever it was, he finally felt like he’d done it right.


End file.
